


Valentine's Day Special

by HolisticPanda



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9436040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolisticPanda/pseuds/HolisticPanda
Summary: It takes every ounce of willpower he has to keep the smile on his face. “Yeah, I just...love her. So much.”





	

He doesn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted by the way Bart devours her stack of pancakes, foregoing her utensils to dig into the plate with her dirty fingers. They’d pulled over at a small roadside diner after he’d complained that he was hungry, but he was already regretting allowing her to order something so messy. Not that he could have stopped her since it was her money they were using. Money she’d taken from the dead bodies of the bikers she’d just killed, but still.

Ken grimaces at the thick, sticky syrup dripping from her chin and leans towards her with his napkin to wipe her face. The glare she levels him with immediately stops him short, though her frown relaxes when she seems to understand what he’s trying to do. She expectantly lifts her chin, grunting her approval of allowing him to at least try to clean her up.

“Your girlfriend sure can put away a stack,” a voice drawls as he removes most of the mess Bart had made of herself. It took wetting a corner of his napkin with a bit of water to clean the more stubborn spots, but she finally looked like she’d eaten in public before.

He glances away from Bart to see their middle aged, dark-haired waitress leaning on the counter in front of them with an expression of wonder nearly mirroring his own, though when her words eventually sink in, he visibly balks. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

A dirty hand wraps itself around the arm of his stolen leather jacket, making it sticky with spit and the syrup she hadn’t yet sucked from her fingers. “I’m his fiancee.” 

Ken feels his jaw drop. His first reaction is to vehemently deny even knowing her, but then he notices her staring hopefully at him and promptly snaps his mouth shut when she darts her eyes towards a small chalkboard hanging on the wall behind the counter. He reads it over and sighs as he realizes what she’s trying to do.

Forcing a smile, he turns back to the waitress. “Uh, I just proposed. Today. It was spur of the moment, and I haven’t had a chance to get a ring yet.”

The older woman’s face spreads into a broad grin. “A proposal on Valentine’s day? Isn’t that just the sweetest thing!”

It takes every ounce of willpower he has to keep the smile on his face. “Yeah, I just...love her. So much.” He clears his throat and nods at the sign behind her. “By the way, I noticed you have a special for couples today?”

Her eyes light up immediately. “Of course! I’ll be right back.” She hurriedly disappears into the kitchen and he breathes a sigh of relief. He almost couldn’t believe that their little act had worked.

His attention is then grabbed by Bart squeezing his arm. “Thanks, Ken.”

“Uh...sure.” He glances down at her hand and she quickly removes it to reach over to his plate, snatching up the last of his bacon and stuffing it into her mouth. “Hey! I was saving that!”

Bart shrugs and grins mischievously. “Food comes to me when I’m supposed to eat it. The universe provides for its disciples.”

He frowns and is about to respond when the waitress returns with a young man who looks to be the cook in tow. Curiously he’s holding an old instant Polaroid camera that looks older than the man himself. The woman places an overly generous slice of pie in front of them, and he can’t stop the genuine smile that spreads across his face at the way Bart’s vivid blue eyes light up. It makes pretending to be betrothed to her worth it.

With a speed she exhibits solely when murdering someone, she reaches out to begin eating, only to have the plate slid just out of reach of her impatient hands.

“Hold on there, ma’am.” Bart glares dangerously at the cook and Ken feels his heart rate spike, praying for the man to let her eat her pie before she finally decides to use one of her utensils--probably her fork--to stab him. “We need a picture for the wall first.”

He follows his line of sight to see a wall full of couples, all of them smiling cheesily for the camera as they feed each other pie, and groans. If he'd known that was part of the deal, he might've told her tough luck.

The waitress steps around the counter to grab Bart by the sleeve of her shirt, leading her towards the bathroom. “You can’t take a picture looking like that. Come here, hon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Bart looks back at him with an unsure frown, and he nods in a way that he hopes is encouraging. He also hopes that she won’t drown the older woman in the toilet, but that might be asking for too much.

He warily watches the women enter the restroom, but then has his attention grabbed by the cook leaning across the counter to speak with him. “What you see in her, anyway?”

“Huh?”

“Your girl. She kinda dirty, ain’t she?”

He’s a little annoyed that this backwoods stranger who doesn’t know anything about her is talking shit and feels the need to defend her--even if he’s right. “We haven’t been able to find a good motel to get cleaned up in. And haven’t you heard it’s what’s inside that counts?”

The cook shakes his head and shrugs. “If you say so, man.”

At that moment Bart reappears, and he feels his breath leave his body. Her messy hair has been tamed somewhat having been pulled into a loose ponytail, and some foundation has been applied to the area beneath her eyes to mask her lack of sleep. Her lips are pinker and shinier than he’s used to, and he belatedly realizes she's wearing lip gloss.

“Good?” she tries to look like she doesn’t care, like it doesn’t matter what he thinks, but there’s a bashfulness in her question that doesn’t quite go unnoticed. He gets a glimpse of the girl that might have been if she weren’t a holistic serial killer.

Forcing what he hopes is a genuine smile, he nods. “Good.”

She looks pleased for a brief couple of seconds, a small grin flashing across her face, but then just like that she’s back to being sour and annoyed. She plops down on her stool and stares impatiently at the man behind the counter. “Take the picture.” 

“Ya’ll can get closer than that, can’t you?” the waitress comments, and if looks could kill, Bart wouldn’t have been the only murderer in the diner.

Bart looks unsure about the request, so he takes the initiative to hesitantly slide his arm over her shoulders. He feels her body tense up briefly before she relaxes into his side and he's more relieved than he cares to admit that she hadn't reflexively stabbed him in the neck. “Take the picture,” she repeats to the cook, angrier and more impatiently.

The man quickly raises the camera to his face and snaps it, the brief flash of light blinding everyone in the room. He pulls the picture from the camera and shakes it before peering at it and nodding to himself with satisfaction--thankfully not noticing the way Bart shrugs his arm off of her shoulders.

Curious, Ken holds out his hand. “Can I see that?” he asks. The cook obliges, and Ken stares down at the still warm Polaroid. Unsurprisingly he's far too dark in it while Bart is blown out, but her smile doesn’t look as crazy as usual and if he squints she actually looks somewhat like a normal person. He moves to show her but she’s already eating the pie, stuffing it into her mouth a fingerful at a time. Seeing how unabashedly happy she looks as she eats makes him shake his head in a mix of exasperation and amusement. In a lot ways she was like a kid and he was a little impressed that she’d survived all this time with such naïvete, universe looking out for her or not.

It barely takes her a minute to finish the entire slice, her spit wettened fingers picking up the remaining crumbs to shove them into her mouth. She stares down at her plate despondently, and that’s when the waitress reappears with a new plate of pie.

“Ya’ll want another slice on the house? Maybe to share this time?” 

Bart grunts and nods, and right as the waitress places the large slice of pie onto the counter two men in black leather jackets burst into the restaurant. They’re armed with double barreled shotguns and their faces are covered with black masks. The shorter chubby one stands guard at the door while the taller one walks right up to the counter and levels his shotgun on the waitress’s face. “Gimme all the money in the register and I might not put another hole in your head. The resta 'ya put your hands in the air.” 

While he’s busy holding his hands up and freaking out, Ken chances a look at Bart to see that she hasn’t looked up from her pie at all. She’s already gotten halfway through the slice, crumbs on her lips and blueberry filling around the edges.

Once the thief has a paper bag containing the diner’s proceeds for the day, he turns his gun on Ken and Bart. “Ya’ll empty your pockets. That means you too, bitch.” She doesn’t react, continuing to shovel her treat down her throat one fingerful at a time, but then the taller man pushes her plate off of the counter and onto the floor. It lands plate side up and the pie splatters all over the scratched linoleum. “I said to empty your fucking pockets.”

In an instant Bart’s hand curls around her fork for the first time since arriving at the diner to jab it into the man’s eye. He screams in pain and instinctively pulls the trigger to shoot her but she’d already used her other hand to redirect it towards the thief’s partner. The buckshot embeds itself in his groin and he falls onto his back, screaming as though he were on fire. 

She grabs her unused butter knife and shoves it straight up the taller thief’s nose, killing him instantly, and then uses his dead body as a shield against the hail of wild bullets the other man sends towards her from the ground. She waits until she hears the clicking of his empty gun before she shoves her makeshift shield aside, picks up the dead man’s discarded shotgun, and stalks angrily up to the terrified man bleeding out on the ground.

He sees her coming and tries to drag himself towards the front doors, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, but he can’t crawl faster than she can walk and looks up at her with terror in his eyes. “Wait, please, don’t--”

She fires a single, loud shot into his face and a deafening silence envelopes the diner. She then looks around at the carnage as though it was her first time noticing any of it, and knowing her, it probably was. “Sorry about the mess.”

Being the first of the two employees to recover from the shock of seeing two people murdered right in front of her, the waitress swallows roughly and shakes her head. “D-don’t...don’t worry about it.”

Bart walks back over to the counter and stares down at her fallen slice of pie morosely, looking more like a pouting child than the woman who’d just killed two grown men with silverware and their own weapons. “I need another slice. Mine fell on the floor.”

“Make that to go, please,” Ken adds.

The waitress rushes past the still shell shocked cook to hand her the rest of the pie with the tin included, not bothering with cutting them another slice.

“You’re not gonna complain about me killin’ someone?” she asks, looking far too pleased for his liking.

Ken shrugs, somewhat helplessly, and reaches into his pocket. “I’m already used to it. We should get out of here before the cops show.” He looks at the still frozen cook, for the first time noticing the splatter of blood across his forehead, and can’t resist saying something. “Still wondering what I see in her?” 

He doesn’t wait for an answer as he places a twenty dollar bill on the countertop and grabs Bart’s arm to drag her out of the diner. The cops would be showing soon, and he wasn’t so much worried about being arrested as he was Bart killing them. Being on the run was a whole lot harder if you’d killed a cop.

When they get to their motorcycle and she’s settled into the sidecar, he quickly glances over to ask if she’s ready to go only to find her staring at the photo they'd just taken less than ten minutes ago. 

“When did you swipe that?”

“While everyone was staring at those two guys.”

“Why?”

She pulls her gaze away from the picture and cocks her head as if the answer is obvious. “It was the first picture I ever took with someone else. And I liked it.” 

He rolls his eyes exasperatedly at her answer but finds himself smiling while he starts up the bike, pulling away from the diner just as sirens begin to sound in the distance.


End file.
